Recipe: Saskatchewan Butter Tarts

I’ll bet that you can’t eat just one. It’s simply not possible!

Ingredients:

Pastry:

  • 2 ⅔ cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ⅔ cup cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
  • 6 tablespoons cold vegetable shortening, cut into pieces
  • 8 tablespoons ice water (+/- depending on weather and humidity)

Filling:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • ¼ cup maple syrup
  • 1 tablespoon melted butter
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ⅛ teaspoon salt

Directions:

  1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Cut in the butter and shortening to make pea-size pieces. Add ice water until dough holds together, then form into a ball. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.
  2. Roll on a lightly floured surface to about ⅛” thick. Cut the shells using a round cookie cutter that will cut circles that will fit your muffin tin (I like to make mini tarts so I use about a 2″ diameter cutter). You should have about 12 medium or 24 small shells when finished. Put these shells into a greased muffin pan.
  3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and beat all ingredients together until full of bubbles. Spoon into pastry-lined tins and bake for 20 minutes.

From an out-of-print Chatelaine cookbook, circa 1950

One Reply to “Recipe: Saskatchewan Butter Tarts”

  1. This is a very nice coincidence. I was recently visiting my family in Canada (I live in the US) and looking at my great-aunt’s recipes for butter tarts and shortbread. I wanted to compare them with the other recipes out there and thought of your blog and the first recipe is for butter tarts! I can’t believe they haven’t crossed the border, they are so delicious.

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